First Become Joyous – Osho

So love this life, and don’t think of THAT. THAT always brings misery, because that brings conflict. Let THAT come through THIS! You love the woman, you love the man… Let God come through that love, let God center you when you are in a state of orgasm. Eat, enjoy the food; let God come to you as a taste. Listen to music, get lost in it, and let God come to you as sound, as harmony. Let God descend on you slowly, slowly, without any hankering to catch hold of him, without any efforts to possess him in your hands. Just open yourself as much as possible – to the trees, to the birds, to the rains, to the sun, to the sands. Open yourself wherever you are, absorb, and gratitude will arise, and that gratitude will become your prayer. And you will not know towards whom this gratitude is arising. When you don’t know towards whom this gratitude is arising, it is towards God. When you know that it is towards God, you don’t know a thing. Then it is the Christian God, or the Hindu God, or the Mohammedan God – and these are not God.

God is basically hidden. Nobody knows his name. The Jews were right never to spell his name. The name of Yahweh was not allowed to be pronounced, because how can we pronounce his name? – We don’t know his name. His whereabouts are unknown. Nobody has ever seen him. Whosoever has seen him has gone into him and disappeared forever; nobody has come back. Nobody knows where he is, who he is. But still, when life is flowing, when life has a flow to it and a dance to it, one feels gratitude. Gratitude comes first and God comes second, not otherwise.

People are trying to bring God first. First they create God, and that is their created God, man-made, home-made, manufactured. Then they bow down to their own manufactured statues. This is utterly stupid – a man bowing down to a statue he has made himself, or has purchased from the market. God is not for sale anywhere! And nobody has seen his face: nobody can make his statue. And nobody knows where he is: overhead, behind, in front, right, left – nobody knows.

But gratitude arises… just as fragrance arises out of a flower and goes on, not knowing where, unaddressed; so, in the same way – unaddressed – arises gratitude. That is prayer, real prayer, and you start feeling God in your heart. Because of this gratitude, because of this prayerfulness, because of this thankfulness enlightenment is not far away. First, become joyous! And Jesus goes on saying it, but nobody listens. He says again and again: Rejoice! Rejoice! I say again rejoice!